


the deepest ache, returning

by Shadaras



Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Grief, Post-TLJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 21:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17567969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: Luke appears to Mara Jade, after the end of The Last Jedi, with a request that starts:There is a girl.





	the deepest ache, returning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ibonekoen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibonekoen/gifts).



“Of course you’re only doing this now.” Mara Jade closed her eyes, as if she could stop her heart from breaking by that simple act. “ _Twenty years_ , Luke, and it’s only now that—”

She couldn’t even get the words out. They choked her, filled up her throat and looped around her chest until Mara Jade collapsed onto the shuttle’s lightless dashboard. (She had been about to boot it up, make sure everything was still in the green.) The cold metal surface pressed into her skin, real in a way that the (old metal) hand gently resting on her shoulder could no longer be.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said, and his voice hadn’t changed. Or it had, but the Force, in its infinite ability to fuck with people, had decided that now that he was dead it shouldn’t have.

Mara Jade shook her head, reached up with her old hand as if it were before everything had gone to shit. (Again. It was always _again_ , because they hadn’t started well.) The idea of Luke’s hand didn’t precisely give resistance to her flesh-and-blood, but the electric rush of the Force hummed against her nerves until it was overwhelming and she had to shudder and let Luke’s hand drop entirely from her body.

He didn’t say anything. (He was good at not saying things. His eyes spoke volumes, but his mouth could stay so stubbornly shut.)

Finally, Mara Jade wiped away her tears and turned to look at him, ghostly and blue-iridescent in the darkened shuttle’s cabin. He gave off almost as much light as came in from the hangar, and that—

More than anything else, that filled her with a flood of fire, indignation lighting up her muscles until she stood in front of him, not daring to try and touch his almost-self, and whispered—because she could not bear to speak any louder—to him: “I had almost let go of you. I _grieved_ , and thought I had moved on.”

Luke closed his eyes, then, and his face constricted in pain.

Free of his eyes, sad and deep and lonely as they always had been, Mara Jade continued. “You disappeared, and I let you have your space, because we _both_ know you do this sometimes—you disappear and show up again five months later with another Force orphan or artifact, with a new scar and story to tell of it.” She was shouting, Mara Jade realised. She didn’t care. Nobody could hear them from inside the shuttle. “But a year passed, and then I looked, and your trail had gone cold, and I thought—”

She swallowed, crossed her arms over her chest, and tried to drown out the remembered cold by speaking steadily, not taking her eyes off Luke’s not-so-impassive face. “I thought that if you had wanted me to follow you, you would have said something.” Mara Jade felt a knot loosen in her chest, felt tears start rolling down her cheeks. “I thought that if you wanted to _leave_ , you also would have said something,” she whispered, “but you didn’t. And so—”

“You thought I was dead,” Luke said, and Mara Jade met his reopened eyes and saw the tears sparkling like stars on his cheeks too.

“No,” she said, bitter smile twisting her face up. “That’s the problem. Leia knew you were still alive, and you’d left her Artoo, and by the time I got around to asking her, he’d already said what you were off chasing this time.”

“I should have told you.”

“Yes.” Mara Jade shook her head. “Fuck, Luke. I can’t even stay mad about it, because _I moved on_. I left. I’m out by the Unknown Regions now, because I couldn’t fucking look at your legacy anymore without wanting to kill someone. Usually _you_.”

Luke winced. “I guess I deserve it.”

“Yes,” Mara Jade said, very tired. “You do.”

They stood there, the only sound Mara Jade’s breathing and the distant hum of electronics, until Luke said, “There’s a girl.”

Mara Jade lifted an eyebrow. “There’s always a girl, Luke. Or some kind of child, anyway.”

“Yes, well.” Luke scratched at the back of his neck, looking about as uncomfortable as Mara Jade had ever seen him. “This one’s different. She found me.”

“Did you find the temple?”

“I did. And then I hid there, because it didn’t have answers, and I didn’t have answers, and I was too scared of myself to ask any of you for help.” Luke spread his hands in a great shrug. “And I was an idiot for many reasons, and then this girl—Rey, from Jakku—found me and asked me to teach her.”

Mara Jade sighed, and rubbed at her temples. She was getting a headache from crying. “And now you’re dead.”

“And she needs a teacher.” Luke paused, and then added, more quietly, “I told her I wouldn’t, because of what happened with Ben.”

“Ben wasn’t your fault,” Mara Jade said, but the words had no force to them; they’d had the argument time and time again, after the slaughter. “You’re still an idiot.”

“Will you teach her?” Luke asked, and for once that wasn’t an _again_.

Mara Jade met his eyes, and smiled softly. “My love, how could you ever think I would do anything else?”

Luke reached out, and as his fingertips brushed her cheek, he began fading away. He said, “Thank you.” And, “I love you.” And, so faint she could barely hear them, save through the depth of the Force resonating through his fingers, “Farewell.”

Mara Jade closed her eyes and quietly, resolutely, let her heart break open.

Then, when her cheeks were covered with salt, she reached out through the Force and started up the shuttle’s engines. There would be more time to grieve on the long journey back to the New Republic and all the people she had tried so hard to leave behind.

 _There is a girl,_ Luke had said, and—

It would be good to help Rey learn how to save herself, just as Mara Jade had, so long ago.


End file.
